If you want to be a pilot, there’s a written test to pass and, more importantly, there’s the “practical test” (otherwise known as a “check ride”) to pass.

Other jobs have similar types of performance tests to pass for qualification or hiring.

Let’s talk about grocery store baggers, the folks who are there to put your groceries into your bags as you check out.

WHY ARE THEY NOT REQUIRED TO PASS A BASIC TETRIS® TEST?

It’s not rocket science or brain surgery, people!

Today for example. When I deliberately take the case of bottled water (or the sodas) and put them first onto the belt, that’s because I realize that: a) they’re heavy, and; b), they take up a lot of room. Anyone with any sort of brain or experience would want to put those on the bottom of the basket, or better yet, on the little shelf down by the wheels underneath the basket.

Right?? So why do they work so hard to find the position that maximizes the inefficiency and makes it hard for anything else to sit in the basket without falling over and/or smashing?

When I make a point to put all of the cold and frozen stuff next so that it can all be put in bags together to STAY cold and frozen even though it’s pushing 100°F outside, why do they split it up between four or five bags? Is there some kind of feng shui thing that indicates that logic and practical science are contraindicated?

More to the point, why do you put the eggs, fruit, and other fragile stuff underneath the heavy stuff?

Since none of this makes any sense, and it would be so easy to either test and/or train for the ability to perform these simple tasks in a fashion that doesn’t boggle the mind, I can only conclude that it’s being done deliberately by the grocery store worker’s union. Probably in collaboration with management, which is the ultimate irony given the long, bitter, scorched earth types of strikes that go on in California about every ten years.

Or I could take it personally and assume that they’re doing it just to piss me off while everyone else gets their groceries bagged in a logical and sane fashion.

Let’s not go there. Let’s just go with the observation that I’ve been watching and reading way too much news coverage of the US Presidential election and it’s affecting me adversely. If that shit won’t give you a brain tumor, I don’t know what will!